Microsoft Just Put Out This '70s Spoof Video Making Fun Of VMWare

Microsoft is getting more aggressive in poking fun at its rivals -- fresh on the heels of Gmail Man (which was supposed to be an internal video only) comes this hilarious take on VMWare:

Looking beyond the '70s routine, what does it all mean?

VMWare, which is majority-owned by storage giant EMC, has a big conference this week. The company makes virtualization software, which in basic terms lets customers run multiple operating systems on one physical machine. It's run by former high-up Microsoft exec Paul Maritz, and for the last several years Microsoft has viewed it as a major threat to its Windows Server business -- if companies keep running old apps by using virtualization, they have less reason to buy new servers running Microsoft software.

Microsoft has its own virtualization product built right into Windows Server, but with this video Microsoft is mostly making fun of the fact that VMWare doesn't operate its own cloud computing services like Microsoft has with Windows Azure. With cloud computing, companies can build new apps without investing in any hardware at all -- with no need to manage the virtual machines themselves.

VMWare could probably come up with plenty of counter-arguments -- including the fact that Microsoft is just taking baby steps into the cloud itself, and still earns most of its money selling on-premises software.